Posted On: Jul 30, 2019
The EBS default volume type has been updated to gp2 when a block storage volume type is not specified within AWS API calls for volume, image, and instance creation.
The AWS console defaults to GP2 in all regions. On July 29th the default EBS volume type was updated in thirteen regions from Standard to GP2. Now AWS API calls for volume, image, and instance creation also default to GP2 in all regions. GP2 volumes offer lower latency and higher throughput than Standard volumes. Standard continues to be a supported EBS volume type. If after this change, you wish to continue to use Standard, or any other EBS volume type, please specify the EBS volume type in the respective API call. In addition, you can always use Elastic Volumes to change to Standard. This change will not affect existing volumes. Only volumes created without specifying the volume type in the API calls after the update will be affected. We encourage you to specify the EBS volume type that best fits your workload needs.
For information about the difference between GP2 and EBS Standard volume types, see our GP2 documentation and Standard volume documentation.